Police arrest resident of Beduin village of al-Fura in a riverbed by the Dead Sea; suspected of strangling daughters.

After fleeing police and the Shin Bet for over a month a Negev man wanted for
murdering his two young daughters was found last week, the Southern District
reported Sunday.

The father, 40-year-old Ali Amtirat, was found hiding on
the roof of an abandoned building in a remote area of the Negev near the Dead
Sea last Tuesday, police reported. Amtirat was exhausted, without food, water or
a cell phone, and was wearing the same clothes he was seen in last when he fled
the village of al-Fura in late May, police said.

Police arrived after
receiving a tip that Amtirat was in the area.

The police who took part in
the raid included officers from the MAGEN anti-smuggling and border security
unit, who specialize in desert tracking, surveillance and
camouflage.

Reports that Amtirat was hiding in the Palestinian
territories had been ruled out early in the search after they were followed up
by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency).

Amtirat, from the Beduin
village of al-Fura, is suspected of strangling the two girls, Asinad and Rimas,
aged three and five on May 21. The murders came only a day after the man’s
exwife, Abir Amtirat, a Palestinian resident of the West Bank, filed a complaint
with Arad Police, stating that the father posed a clear and present danger to
the lives of their children.

Police negligence in fielding the complaint
led Insp.-Gen.

Yochanan Danino to order the dismissal of the commander of
the Arad Police and two deputies.

On Sunday, Southern District Commander
Yoram Halevy described the “nerve-wracking, around the clock” hunt for the
father as “an unusual, extraordinarily difficult manhunt after a dangerous
suspect hiding in open fields, caves and ravines.”

Halevy added that the
arrest is not cause for celebration, and that police must still work quietly and
determinedly in a “professionally modest” way to assemble evidence for an
indictment.